Zach Beauvais

I’m afraid my old site decided it didn’t like me any more and broke. I was in the process of updating the theme when my broadband connection dropped. I have no idea which file/s were corrupted, but I decided to simplify the blog.

This is not the theme it will remain, it’s boring and narrow. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to leave comments (I’m working on a contact form!)

Thanks and sorry for any inconvenience: I assure you, it was worse for me

Blogging about politics can be a bit of a mixed bag, so we’ll see how it goes. I want to avoid polarising talk, tabloid tactics, and FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt). Instead, I’d like to discuss the latest raft of changes which seek to make immigrants ‘more British’ before offering them citizenship.

Personal Perspective

First, and as a matter of context: I am an immigrant. I was born and raised in Colorado, USA, and have lived in the UK for the last 5 years or so. My national identity, however, is a more complicated matter. I resonate politically better with Britain than the United States. I admire more British personages than American (probably due to the fact that the only great Americans I can think to name are either dead or long dead…). I laugh at British comedians, and listen to Radio 4. I queue. I share the occasional withering glance  with my fellow public transport passengers whenever a tourist declares loudly that something is cute or quaint. I even say: "Oh, excuse me, sorry" when someone else runs into me at Sainsburys, and I say "Cheers" or "Ta" even when someone should be thanking me.

This has put me in an interesting position at times. I have been part of conversations when the other party doesn’t actually know, or momentarily forgets, that I grew up singing The Star-Spangled Banner before watching baseball.

"Well, I think Americans are rude and ignorant".

Watching TV online is becoming a bit of a hobby of mine.  I don’t have a TV anywhere in the house, and it is just so much more convenient to be able to watch what I want, when I do, without  having to play around with channels or digital interfaces which seem built to be slow (i.e. digital TV). Early efforts to watch online were riddled with frustration. I trialled Joost along with however many millions of others who signed up for a Beta invite, but found the system clunky and without real appeal in the frankly poor content. Also, it was a memory hog and froze my then-ageing Dell. There was also the problem with pirates and ‘linked TV’ Not only is there the conscience to console, but one popular link site, tv-links.co.uk, actually landed its founder in prison. YouTube only provides short clips, or pirated episodes which are quickly removed by moderators.

So, where does that leave the casual TV-watcher? With all the early difficulty of installing software, finding Betas, or perusing content which either didn’t work or you didn’t want to play, it seemed that watching tv-quality content online has always been a struggle. With new improvements, though, can you actually watch TV online easily and relatively free from frustration? I think it’s getting there.

UK TV Online

First, I’d like to note that I will be avoiding Hulu and any discussion of it aside from mentioning that it doesn’t work in the UK. Both of the services reviewed below, to be fair to US readers, currently only work in the UK.

I am a firm believer in the idea that a little knowledge is dangerous. When you overhear a conversation in which one person says to another (imagine whatever derisory accent adds to the flavour-I always seem to hear Watford…):

"Yeah, ever since I watched that (insert celebrity TV show) the other day, I gave up (eating, drinking, buying) + (wheat, white wine, bleach…). Really makes you think, donnit?"

I always, always wince and imagine having the temerity (or bad manners) to break in with questions about the speaker’s level of intelligence, trust in an over-paid celebrity, or belief in a ridiculous cult of misinformation. Allergies seem to be a favourite topic in these conversations, I’ve noticed.

I find the proponents of these ideas far more galling, however. Dieticians, ’scientists’ from dubious academic associations, ’specialists’ and ‘independent consultants’: all these people ruin their very titles for the proper holders. Worse is when people go off half-cocked and make a mint selling their partially-formed philosophy.

I have just discovered a new breed in the person of Lee Siegel. I will, in the interests of transparency, state that I only heard about the man today, at about 16:30, and I know about him only what Wikipedia does, so not much, and therefore have only a limited platform from which to wince and whinge.

It is now 2008, and I wish you all the best for it.

I’ve been asked by all the friends who shared the ringing of the new in last night about new years’ resolutions I might have.

I tend to be very abstract, and can’t really put an exact goal down, and have always felt a bit pressured to make something sound important and amazing without being pretentious. I plan to lose two stone or climb a mountain or travel more or read better books… These are all kinds of things I’d like to do, and might. But I don’t want the added pressure of people knowing, especially because most people wouldn’t remember anyway.

I am blessed enough to have friends who would remember, actually, and that makes me even more disinclined to set a list of resolutions. For a particular friend, her last year’s resolutions all turned out to be blessings, and she fulfilled them. I think she’s amazing, and wish her all the best for this years, and I can see how, to her, the resolutions are challenges and exciting possibilities.

Unfortunately, any resolutions I might put down tend to carry with them the taint of guilt. Thoughts of: "oh, that was too much food, that’s another resolution lost" or "why am I reading this, I thought I was trying to better my mind…?" are more prominent than the excitement of challenges.

So, I won’t be making any resolutions for this year.